The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo Review

Like most people, after watching a movie that was based off a book, I come to the conclusion that the book was better. I’m not sure if this has something to do with the amount of time I have put into a book, or perhaps the fact that I paint such a vivid picture of each character and scene in my mind. The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo is no exception; I enjoyed the book more than the movie, but only slightly.

I received the book as a present a little over a year ago, and I didn’t seriously commit to reading it until late summer/early fall 2011. At first, I was a little bored by the story and confused by all the Swedish characters. But after 100 or so pages, I was hooked. I thoroughly enjoyed trying to picture all of the characters and the foreign lands the author described. I was surprised and satisfied once the mystery was solved, but was confused as to why the book continued so much longer after that point. I did not like how it took so long to tie the loose ends together at the end of the book.

The movie was great in that respect, because it seriously condensed both the slow beginning and drawn out conclusion of the book. However, my one main criticism of the movie is that it ends differently than the book. After coming to grips with the fact that the movie was already 3 hours long, and if they stuck true to the ending of the book, it would have been much longer, I realized that it was a great movie.

I highly recommend both the book and the movie, and I look forward to the second book in this trilogy – The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Alyssa